On a small, isolated island between Sicily and Africa, a film crew lands to shoot a large-scale feature film. The filmmaker and his entourage settle on the island, providing employment to the locals, but disrupting their bucolic daily rhythm. A large group of African immigrants are brought to the Island from Sicily, to work as extras on the film. The job requires that they get into the water and act out the part of refugees arriving by rickety boat, something most of them have actually experienced. [S]comparse is an abstract meditation on the day-to-day reality of immigration in a small community.